Arrogant Game Preview: UCLA

I delayed this post a day and promised it would be my most arrogant in ages, maybe ever. How’s this for a start: It’s going to be the most arrogant of all time. Why? I’ve already baked the cake. I’m just waiting to serve you a piece.

This year more than any other, I took it upon myself to leverage the incredible level of influence you, Arrogant Nation, have given me to completely expose to the universe everything we’ve always known UCLA to be. I could sling adjectives and nouns to try and describe at length, but I’ll leave it at UCLA is that tattle-tale, snot-nosed tool on the playground who tried to tell the teacher on you, but got his ass jumped in the parking lot in front of a bunch of hot chicks and years later, regardless of whether he ended up a butcher or a businessman, knows that he probably deserved it for going out of his way to be such a perfect punching bag.

I am hell with a pen and you knew I was going to let missiles fly. You knew I was going to pull out all the stops. And I did. And it worked. It worked enough that SportsCenter made the story of UCLA “banning” our freaking marching band from stabbing a sword five inches into the 50 yard line a national punchline, not just a local embarrassment.

Let me clue you in. When ESPN decides to air a story about you banning a marching band, the whole country sees you for that tattle-tale nerd on the playground. The country wants you to get jumped behind the playground. That’s because college football is about traditions or it would be the NFL. It’s about you pissing off your rival and your rival pissing you off. The best part? Right after, you get to play football against them. For a school that claims to be academically prestigious, you are really missing the point. I understand though. Basketball started and as bandwagon football fans, you are probably only half-paying attention.

When Notre Dame issues a statement that they’ve never banned USC’s 41 year tradition that is a hallmark of the mise en scene of college football tradition (that a Bruin would never understand), they are saying that you guys don’t get it. When Notre Dame is giving you lessons on “getting it”, drown yourself in your dorm toilets. Notre Dame is the school that grows their grass longer to slow USC down. They don’t have an issue with our drum major stabbing their 50 yard line and they have lost as much as you have to us in the last decade or so.

Let’s get down to it.

Tomorrow is the day. Kudos to our cuddly, football-deficient friends renting in Westwood in the shadows of our Bel-Air Trojan homes. They have created the perfect confluence of factors to actually make us care this year. And their mascot not only is a bear, but a total pussy who brings his girlfriend to football games. I know a fan is going to come on here and tell me they are brother and sister or something. Let me cut you off. I don’t give a fuck.

It’s better than the bear statue on campus who looks like he’s midway through getting a catheter put in:

The thing is, no matter what they would have you believe, they aren’t proud of this. Not the Bruins I know (of the non web troll kind). They think their AD is stupid for this. They didn’t want to get us fired up for the game.

UCLA as an athletic department just has no concept of PR, advertising or general self-respect. Before you respond, consider that Bruin Nation, the “blog” that was petitioning for UCLA to ban the field stab in the first place spent most of last year trying to get AD Dan Guerrero fired for all the things they embody themselves.

From down the street in the “hood” as they’d call it, we can see it pretty clearly. You’re whiners. You are the guys that ditch practice as a tradition (true). You are the guys who carried a coach you fired off the field (true). You are the guys who petitioned the NCAA to play in a bowl with a 6-7 record despite knowing that would tie you with North Texas for worst team to be invited to a bowl (true). You are the guys who then lost that bowl and own the solo distinction as “worst team ever to play in a bowl” at 6-8 (true). That was last year (true).

You are the guys who print a newspaper ad that says “the football monopoly in Los Angeles is over” just because you hired a coach who ended up losing every game he coached against USC (true). You are the guys who had a coach who issued the statement “the gap has closed” between our football team and your intramural team only to lose 50-0 (true). You are the guys who replaced that coach with a coach who used the murder of two USC grad students as a recruiting ploy in an LA Times interview saying “murdered two blocks from campus” even though the only murder two blocks from campus was 50-0 (true).

You are the guys who literally let a coach “wave a white towel”, the international signal for “stop shooting at us”, as a pump up during games (true).

You are a PR nightmare with a football problem.

Look, none of us are proud of the kid who deflated balls to try and help USC win a game. Frankly, it made me sick. I am glad they fired him and in a way, I am glad we lost because I’d hate to win that way. When we beat you tomorrow, we’ll play Oregon at Oregon for the title and we’ll make it right, win or lose.

None of us are proud of what Reggie Bush and his family did, even if none of your seasonal fair weather football fans understand what happened. Let me help.

Still, we didn’t like taking down a Heisman. I am making a point that when we do wrong, it’s bad and we can own it. Who owned sanctions more than I did? How many fucking shirts did we sell? When life hands me lemons, I sell them and buy a yacht. In space.

The thing is, we can still be proud of our school because we’re not the kind of wimps who ban marching bands from their traditions just because in a year where you don’t have to play Washington or Oregon, you find yourself 8-2 and decide this year you DEMAND respect damnit! Never mind the country still remembers this rivalry more for 50-0 than anything else, so this whiny sanctioning of a band makes you look, what’s the medical term? Butt hurt.

Take it from me, scoring a touchdown this year will go a lot farther in gaining respect (a point even SportsCenter made, yeesh) than sanctioning a fucking marching band like the narcs you are. Why don’t you report the kid smoking weed in your dorm while your at it? Tackle the kid stealing a piece of gum from 7-11.

So, in a year where it’d have been enough that you are 8-2 and we are 7-3, that you are ranked higher than us in the AP and that the winner of this game goes to the Pac 12 Championship, you decide to toss me a match in the dry hillsides of Southern California. Our fan base has waited all year for a unifying moment, for what this season that started with national title hopes means now that we’re not playing in that game no matter what we do to you.

The Bearfighter reminded them by using that match to light a molotov cocktail and set the Southland ablaze with his super-strong arm because he tossed the bottle from the Pacific Northwest.

I decided to burn this motherfucker down and it started with a tweet:

Not that tweet, but a string of tweets just like it.

Then everyone caught on…

What continued was me just tweeting under the #UCLArequests hashtag made up examples of other things your school requested now that apparently marching bands can hurt your feelings.

To say it went viral would be like saying Outbreak was about the sniffles. Former USC players, sports bloggers and all of Trojan Nation participated posting #UCLArequests at a clip of something like 3-5 tweets a minute. And it hasn’t stopped. Two days later.

It became a trending topic in Los Angeles. It’s led to media coverage. It’s got our whole fan base in an uproar and more than anything, we’ve gotten a lot of good laughs at your expense, which we usually have to wait to get when you do things like BAN FUCKING MARCHING BANDS YOU WHINERS.

Matt Leinart came out of retirement to retweet something from my homie Alex Holmes who got over 400 RTs on his post, which I’d argue is more RTs than UCLA has gotten about their football team across all tweets all year.

Can I back that stat up? Fuck you.

The point is, the hashtag and meme went viral because no one has any trouble seeing what you missed: you sanctioned a marching band and confused college football for politics. Some sick part of me will be fine if you win because maybe you will learn to respect the sport. That, again, starts with scoring a touchdown this year. And teaching your quarterback not to throw up TWO victory v’s when you have a big win.

So, now it’s about a football game. You’ve lost 12 of 13. You would need to win every game for two decades to even call this a rivalry (or at least take down the PCC champion banners you hang like they were national titles, I feel like if we listed all our PCC to Pac 10 titles we’d need more room than a stadium wrapped around 100 yards offers).

You’ll get your chance, Saturday Bruins. You’ll get your chance to defend that sacred home field that you never cared about until the Pac 12 put us stabbing your logo in it’s Pac 12 Network promo reel because it fired people up.

You’ll get your chance to defend your stadium that is closer to our campus than yours.

You’ll get your chance to defend a stadium that has your name written in paint on the grass and our name written dozens of times in bronze plaques on the wall of champions outside.

You’ll get to defend your home stadium that the country associates more with us, but sure guys, show that pride…

I’m skipping my normal format.

Prediction: We win. Don’t care how. You already disrespected the good part of the sport. Instead of trying to ban steroids in baseball, you chose to ban “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”.

Congrats. See you tomorrow.

As an offering to those of you who want some gear before the season ends, here’s a 5 dollar off code you can use. We’re putting up some vintage gear. It’s gonna run for a while and then we’ll find a ship date. That code? FIELDSTAB

Okay so I went to bruin nation and told them to check out Lost Angeles. “I’ll just leave this here.”

Someone called me out, someone I know mind you. He was condescending, but I responded with class. I responded and gave mad respect to my old Alma Mater (2 years UCLA undergrad), then pointed out some flaws in their argument and fan base.

“The difference between the USC & UCLA bandwagon is that UCLA’s Consist of the Student Body, who just found out their team is A-OK.” This was the “worst” thing I said.

I got a warning. Okay…

Then I asked why am I getting a warning for being respectful? My comment got deleted (the respectful one) so now I look like a defenseless douche. I then addressed the people calling me idiots, thanking them for their “class”

I then got banned. Okay. So much for that. #UCLArequest you stop being so fact based. #UCLArequest hive mentality.

Although this isn’t saying much because most UCLA football fans despise the despots at Bruins Nation, so BN doesn’t represent UCLA. Instead, the BN blog heads are a bunch of idiots who censor any reasonable fan, Bruin or not.

lol, this is what I got for saying them being relevant again is good for the rivalry (I mean, I can sort of see how that’s offensive but come on) and wishing them good luck tomorrow. Classy, thick-skinned folks they got.

Does it embarrass you to write such a hit job on UCLOL and then watch them destory U$C for 3 and a half hours? Or are U$C fans such degenerates, such pompous aholes, that next week you will blow a load over Lame Kiffen as he prepares to get manhandled by ND as if your football team doesn’t suck ass????????

Maybe Lame Kiffen can get a job inflating footballs for UCLOL next year.

How do you like them apples? All you can come back with is ‘stop reading a USC blog’ Wah wah wah. A blog is a blog intended for everyone to see. Accept the loss and embrace it for the whole year…or you can dwell on it. GO BRUINS.

you don’t need to write out the word hashtag if you already put a #. and you’re whole argument is flawed because if college football is about “pissing off your rivals” then that’s exactly what ucla was doing when they banned your band. boom you lose.

After an epic night of celebrating, boozing it up, and hooking up with sullen sc trojie chicks to cheer them up, I’m ready to embark upon a round of putting dimwitted, loser trojies in their place. Let it be known that there is more pain coming to sc in the foreseeable future (i.e. next few years) than what Barkley felt after meeting Barr…

Ive got to go…my fellow alumni are ready to head over to some sc area bars (if there are any) to comfort some more sc “la-dees” while basking in the sun that is setting on Figueroa Tech.

…again, much fun WAS had the past several days…really. Thanks for the well wishes

I’ll give you this, I remember reading this blog and having a good laugh a long time ago because it was actually funny. Since then, like your team and your school, things have gone considerably south. I hope the trojan team is actually competitive next year so that we can have a better game.

trojans cheated, now they are getting everything they deserve. they came in to the season entitled with that fake #1 ranking, without working hard. Lee came in demanding the ball, while Woods the true receiver got ignored. So Barkley forced passes, got hurt etc… and now hes left with a 7-5 record a hurt shoulder and a non-heisman, great ” unfinished business trojan fan. the only thing worth rooting for is your 27-0 waterpolo team!